The Quebec college of physicians has issued a clear warning to doctors to stop performing virginity tests, a practice linked to bridal purity and family honour.
Chastity is not a medical or health condition, Charles Bernard, president of the Collège des médecins, told The Gazette. Gynecological exams for virginity certificates contravene the profession’s code of ethics on several grounds, including breaching patient confidentiality, Bernard said
The practise is outrageous, repugnant, irrelevant and unacceptable, he said.
“Imagine a doctor who does a gynecological examination with the sole purpose of ... it goes beyond the imagination. And it’s degrading to women,” Bernard said.
The College was responding to a study by two ethics specialists from the Université de Montréal who were called upon by a school nurse and other health professionals after five incidents of families seeking virginity checks in the last 18 months in Quebec.
The practice is restricted in some European countries and many medical associations — in France, Belgium, Spain and Denmark — have urged members not to carry out virginity exams.
However, some doctors have admitted to providing fake proof of virginity, without having performed a chastity test, “in the interest of harm reduction to save a girl’s honour,” said ethicist and UdM researcher Marie-Ève Bouthillier.
There are no statistics on the frequency or scale, Bouthillier said, “because it’s a taboo practice and it’s hidden.”
“But this is a problem and these are not isolated cases,” added Claire Faucher, assistant clinical professor at UdM’s faculty of medicine, who, along with Bouthillier, conducted the research that led to the College guidelines.
The World Health Organization considers virginity tests as sexual violence against women, Faucher said. Women and girls sometimes resorting to plastic surgery to create the illusion of virginity.
“It reduces virginity to a piece of skin,” Bouthillier said.
The ethicists were initially contacted by a clinic nurse who was asked by a young woman in her 20s during a routine medical checkup whether “she was still marriageable.” She had asked the nurse to check if her hymen (a piece of tissue that lines the vaginal opening) was still intact.
Two weeks earlier, the researchers got a call about an adolescent who had been forced to undergo a chastity test. The distressed girl raised the issue with her school nurse, who reassured her that such things are not done in Quebec — but then, the girl’s family forced her to go to a clinic.
“We got the impression that the physician was pressured by the family in the emergency room. The father was very insistent about having the certificate, and to get rid of the problem, the doctor did it,” Bouthillier said. The family then circulated the doctor’s name as the go-to doctor for proof of chastity.
“What’s hiding behind this demand? What awaits the girl? Is she in danger? Are we giving her a ticket to something more dangerous that may follow a certificate of virginity?” Faucher demanded.
“The nurse who called me about verifying virginity immediately thought about the Shafia family,” Bouthillier said, referring to the notorious murders involving a Montreal family.
In 2009, the bodies of four Afghan-Québécoise women — Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, and their father’s wife, Rona Amir Mohammed — were found at the bottom of the Kingston Mills locks in Ontario. Mohammad Shafia, his other wife, Tooba Yahya and their son, Hamed, were convicted of murder in the so-called “honour killings,” and are serving life sentences.
Since the killings, cultural communities vowed to take action against all forms of domestic violence, including murders motivated by honour, and youth protection services pledged to examine their practices.
Young people who complain of serious physical or psychological stress related to their parents should be signalled to youth protection, said Madeleine Bérard, director of youth protection at Batshaw Youth and Family Centres. They may be at risk of abuse, Bérard said.
Doctors, teachers — anyone, in fact, who is in the front lines with youth who may be subject to virginity tests — have to gently ask, “What is behind the (virginity) request?” Bérard said.
“Is there something that needs to be offered in terms of support or services? Sometimes it’s not the families but the young ladies themselves who go for the test. What kind of pressure do they feel under?”
But professionals must wade in with great sensitivity, Bérard warned.
“We have to make sure we don’t judge or make assumptions about bad intentions of parents.”